Emma Rush awakens long-lost guitar music with new album
Hamilton musician finds 19th century music written for the guitar by women
What began with the purchase of a new classical guitar led to a bountiful harvest of long-neglected musical delights and Emma Rush’s third solo album.
Back in the spring of 2018, the Hamilton-based Rush travelled to Rimouski, Que. to pick up the guitar she’d ordered from luthier Miodrag Zerdoner. Made of maple and spruce, the guitar is a copy after the 19th century Viennese luthier, Johann Georg Stauffer.
“I don’t usually play a lot of romantic music so I started thinking about an interesting project that could involve the instrument,” Rush told The Spectator. “My goal with every project is to try and offer something new to the guitar world.”
And so, Rush landed on the idea of researching works for guitar by long-neglected 19th century female composers.
“I knew a little bit about (German guitar virtuosa) Catharina Pratten and (Italian-born) Emilia Giuliani, but beyond that I had no idea if there was any 19th century music written for the guitar by women.” One way to find out.
In the fall of 2018, with financial assistance from a Research and Creation grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, and an International Residency grant from the Ontario Arts Council, Rush headed over to Lubeck, Germany for a twomonth residency hosted by GEDOK Schleswig-Holstein, an organization that supports female artists.
After spending hours combing through digitized archives, hunting through baptismal records and contemporary reviews for biographical info, as well as visits to Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Library, London’s
British Library, and one very fruitful afternoon in Oxford’s Bodleian Library where a kindly librarian pointed out a big box of uncatalogued scores, Rush hit pay dirt.
“I can’t count the number of pieces I found,” said Rush. “Composers like Julia Piston or Susan Domett only have a couple works for solo guitar, but Emilia Giuliani has almost 20 works to choose from, and Catharina Pratten has dozens of pieces.”
And what better way to sweep the dust off these long-neglected composers than by recording some of their works for posterity.
So, in late 2019, Rush booked three recording sessions at Kirk Starkey’s Hamilton studio and laid down 17 tracks.
“I picked my favourites from Emilia Giuliani’s catalogue,” said Rush. “With Pratten, I looked for pieces that showed a different side to her writing than what we hear in the few pieces that have been recorded before. Of the 17 tracks on the record, only three have been recorded by anyone else. And two of those pieces only have one other recording.”
The album is bookended by Giuliani’s virtuosic “Variazioni sopra un tema del m.o Mercadante” and her “Variazioni sopra il tema ‘Non più mesta accanto al fuoco,’” the theme for the latter taken from Rossini’s opera “La Cenerentola.”
In between are Pratten’s “Kelpie’s Dance” and “Fairy Sketches: Queen Mab and Puck no. 2,” Domett’s “Two Original Polkas,” Piston’s “Variations sur l’air Vive Henri IV,” Angiolina Panormo Huerta’s “Andante and Allegretto,” Julie Fondard’s “Deux valses suisses,” and Delores de Goni’s “Six Waltzes.”
When casting about for the album’s title, Rush turned to the final quatrain of nineteenth century author Emily Brontë’s poem, “The Lady to Her Guitar,” which begins,
“Of the 17 tracks on the record, only three have been recorded by anyone else. And two of those pieces only have one other recording.” EMMA RUSH ABOUT HER THIRD SOLO ALBUM
“Even so, Guitar, thy magic tone hath moved the tear and waked the sigh.”
“For me, ‘Wake the Sigh’ conjured up images of awakening long-lost music,” said Rush.
To complete the package, Rush tapped Hamilton’s Richard Talbot for the album’s artwork and photography.
Due to the pandemic, there won’t be a release party for “Wake the Sigh.” Instead, thanks to a Canada Council for the Arts Digital Strategy grant, Rush will release a series of videos in February or March. In the spring, she plans to hold an online master-class through Groupmuse to present some of the album’s material.
The album is available for $15 at emma-rush.com/store/ and emmarush.bandcamp.com/releases.
Due to lockdown restrictions in southern Ontario, the HPO is postponing the recording and online broadcast of their Jan. 23 “A New Year’s Celebration” to a later date to be announced.
Instead, three broadcasts from last fall have been reactivated for purchase at hpo.org/category/20-21-concerts/ and are viewable until Jan. 31.
Online broadcasts scheduled for February through June are currently proceeding as planned.